BigBang....

Hardly anyone remembers now, but 1991 was a bad year for the Big Bang..... “Big Bang Blown to Bits,” read one headline I remember.

The Big Bang, they say, happened 13.7 billion years ago, plus or minus 150,000 years.

Moreover, they now say, ordinary atomic matter of the kind that makes up you, me and the stars is 4 percent of the cosmos; dark matter that floats as gravitational glue between the stars and galaxies is 20 percent; and dark energy, which is apparently accelerating the cosmic expansion, pushing the galaxies faster and faster apart, is 76 percent, plus or minus 2 percent.

Still, the universe can always use a new Copernicus or Einstein. Thanks to the Cobe scientists and their successors, these are boom times for the Big Bang. After all, 96 percent of the universe is still waiting to be found.

yours sincerely
BB